Featured Research

from universities, journals, and other organizations

Virus fans the flames of desire in infected crickets

Date:

January 6, 2014

Source:

Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology (SICB)

Summary:

Love may be a battlefield, but most wouldn't expect the fighters to be a parasitic virus and its cricket host. Just like a common cold changes our behavior, sick crickets typically lose interest in everyday activities. But when a scientist found her cricket colony decimated by a pathogen, she was shocked that the dying insects didn't act sick. Not only had the infected crickets lost their usual starvation response, but they also continued to mate. A lot. How were the pathogen and the exuberant amorous behavior in the sick crickets connected?

Share This

Love may be a battlefield, but most wouldn't expect the fighters to be a parasitic virus and its cricket host. Just like a common cold changes our behavior, sick crickets typically lose interest in everyday activities. But when Dr. Shelley Adamo of Dalhousie University found her cricket colony decimated by a pathogen, she was shocked that the dying insects didn't act sick. Not only had the infected crickets lost their usual starvation response, but they also continued to mate. A lot. How were the pathogen and the exuberant amorous behavior in the sick crickets connected?

Related Articles

Dr. Adamo soon realized that she had stumbled onto a classic parasite-host struggle. As a neurobiologist, Dr. Adamo is especially interested in parasites that control the behavior of their hosts, known as parasite manipulators. "Parasite manipulators have something to teach us about how brains work," says Adamo, as they are able to exert fine-grained control over their hosts' brains in ways that human neurobiologists can only dream of. Parasites use hormones, neurotransmitters and other proteins to disconnect the host brain and the immune system, altering host behaviors to increase the survival and reproduction of the parasite. By studying the various avenues parasites use to control their hosts, neurobiologists hope to gain new understanding of how nervous systems produce behavior.

Dr. Adamo set out to determine the mechanisms by which the virus changed cricket behavior. As presented recently at the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology annual conference in Austin, Adamo and colleagues found that the virus invaded and reproduced in the crickets' fat body, a vital organ that controls insect energy reserves.

By attacking this single organ, the virus impacted the host in multiple ways. In sick crickets, almost all of the hosts' resources were channeled into producing proteins for the virus, and the fat body became engorged with viral particles. As a result, infected crickets showed signs of sterility, as females produced few if any eggs, and male sperm showed low or no mobility. But attacking the fat body doesn't only help the virus gain host resources, so it seems that sterility is just collateral damage in the fight between the virus and the crickets.

Besides its role in making fats, the fat body also creates proteins that contribute to the crickets' immune responses. Dr. Adamo and colleagues found that infected crickets had overall lower levels of proteins in their blood, including a key component of the crickets' immune response. By hijacking the cricket fat body, the virus established itself more easily by knocking out part of the cricket immune response, a necessary tactic for any parasite to avoid being detected and destroyed by their host.

And what about the ardent mating that Dr. Adamo first observed in her sick crickets? The virus was the culprit, acting like other parasitic manipulators to change cricket mating behavior for its own gain. While it was unusual to find that sick female crickets acted just like healthy females, Adamo's biggest surprise was in sick male crickets. They actually outperformed healthy control males in mating, courting females more quickly and enthusiastically. Because the virus can be contracted through sexual contact, more matings means more opportunities for the virus to spread.

While Dr. Adamo was happy that she could turn the lemon of her dying cricket colony into an interesting study of this parasitic virus manipulator, she doesn't have any future plans to study this virus. Instead, she is moving on to other larger and more manageable parasite manipulators of crickets. By using the smaller and less complex cricket brain as a model, Dr. Adamo hopes to uncover more broad patterns of nervous system function in both immune responses and, of course, behavior.

More From ScienceDaily

More Plants & Animals News

Featured Research

Mar. 3, 2015 — Scientists have discovered a new hormone that fights the weight gain caused by a high-fat Western diet and normalizes the metabolism -- effects commonly associated with exercising. When tested in ... full story

Mar. 3, 2015 — New assays can detect malaria parasites in human blood at very low levels and might be helpful in the campaign to eradicate malaria, reports a new study. An international team led by Ingrid Felger, ... full story

Mar. 3, 2015 — While studying a ground-nesting bird population near El Reno, Okla., a research team found that stress during a severe weather outbreak of May 31, 2013, had manifested itself into malformations in ... full story

Mar. 3, 2015 — The 3-D printing scene, a growing favorite of do-it-yourselfers, has spread to the study of plasma physics. With a series of experiments, researchers have found that 3-D printers can be an important ... full story

Mar. 3, 2015 — Most people consume more salt than they need and therefore have a higher risk of heart disease and stroke, which are the two leading causes of death worldwide. But a new study reveals that dietary ... full story

Mar. 3, 2015 — By examining the forces that the segments of mosquito legs generate against a water surface, researchers have unraveled the mechanical logic that allows the mosquitoes to walk on water, which may ... full story

Mar. 3, 2015 — Pediatric otolaryngologists and surgeons are concerned with parents getting the wrong message regarding the safety/desirability of letting babies and young children eat peanuts to prevent them from ... full story

Mar. 3, 2015 — Researchers have developed a new way of rapidly screening yeasts that could help produce more sustainable biofuels. The new technique could also be a boon in the search for new ways of deriving ... full story

Featured Videos

Rare Goblin Shark Found in Australia

AFP (Mar. 3, 2015) — A goblin shark, a rare sea creature described as an &apos;alien of the deep&apos; is found off Australia and delivered to the Australian Museum in Sydney. Duration: 01:25
Video provided by AFP

Zookeepers Copy Animal Poses In Hilarious Viral Photos

Buzz60 (Mar. 2, 2015) — Zookeepers at the Symbio Wildlife Park in Helensburgh, Australia decided to take some of their favorite animal photos and recreate them by posing just like the animals. Jen Markham (@jenmarkham) has the story.
Video provided by Buzz60

Related Stories

Sep. 2, 2014 — With their long, spiky legs and their propensity for eating anything, including each other, camel crickets are the stuff of nightmares. And now research finds that non-native camel cricket species ... full story

May 29, 2014 — For most of us, crickets are probably most recognizable by the distinctive chirping sounds males make with their wings to lure females. But some crickets living on the islands of Hawaii have ... full story

Oct. 6, 2011 — Some male crickets will apparently put the lives of their mating partners ahead of their own. When a mated pair is out together, a male will allow a female priority access to the safety of a burrow, ... full story

Feb. 3, 2011 — Researchers have discovered the 100 million-year-old ancestor of a group of large, carnivorous, cricket-like insects that still live today in southern Asia, northern Indochina and Africa. The new ... full story

June 3, 2010 — Tracing the success of individual wild insects in leaving descendants is now possible, according to biologists using a combination of digital video technology, tagging and DNA fingerprinting. A new ... full story

ScienceDaily features breaking news and videos about the latest discoveries in health, technology, the environment, and more -- from major news services and leading universities, scientific journals, and research organizations.